DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1- 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Khoshnevisan et al. (US 2020/0313803 A1), hereinafter “Khoshnevisan” , in view of R1-2100896, “PDSCH/PUSCH enhancements to support NR above 52.6 GHz”, 3GPP TSG RAN WG1 #104-e, e-Meeting, January 25th - February 5th , 2021, source LG Electronics, hereinafter “LG”.
Claims 1, 11, and 20:
Regarding claim 1, Khosnevisan discloses, a hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgment (HARQ ACK) feedback method ([Abstract] “Hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ)-acknowledgement (ACK) feedback codebook enhancements are disclosed”.), comprising:
determining, by a terminal, a candidate physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) reception occasion set based on a slot timing set corresponding to an actual HARQ ACK feedback unit (Khosnevisan: Clm.1, “identifying, by the UE, possible Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH) occasions of the window based on at least a set of feedback timing delay values and a set of Time Domain Resource Allocation (TDRA) candidates), wherein in the slot timing set, each element corresponds to one first slot set and each element corresponds to a different first slot set (Khosnevisan: Fig.4A step 401, “Receive a downlink control message including an additional set ID identifying one or more additional sets of downlink transmissions that map to additional sets of acknowledgement resources.”).
Khosnevisan, though in Figs.7a-7c show consecutive slots in a first slot set, however fails to teach motivation that the first slot set comprises at least two consecutive slot units.
LG In the same field of endeavor of supporting feedback for multiple PDSCH in a single PUCCH, discloses, “Proposal #5: For a DCI scheduling multiple PDSCHs, a single PUCCH resource is indicated by PUCCH resource indicator and corresponding multiple HARQ-ACK bits are multiplexed on the indicated single PUCCH, where HARQ-ACK feedback timing is determined by applying PDSCH-to HARQ_feedback timing indicator from the last scheduled POSCH.”.
Determination of HARQ-ACK feedback timing by applying PDSCH-to HARQ_feedback timing indicator from the last scheduled POSCH, is motivated by accommodation of all the feedbacks for the group of PDSCHs in different slots and thus reduce required uplink transmission resource.
Use of a single PUCCH resource for feedback reduces the required HARQ codebook size. This is disclosed by Khosnevisan, “the feedback codebook having a size based on acknowledgement feedback for first possible PDSCH occasions that occur during the identified one or more COTs of the window of the possible PDSCH occasions of the window.” ([0008]). Fig. 7 of Khosnevisan shows different K1 values for different PDSCH slots. K1 defines the separation between PDSCH transmission and HARQ feedback.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the disclosure in LG and combine with the disclosure by Khosnevisan to have the group of concerned PDSCHs to be consecutive so as to minimize the time delay (the K1 value) between the first PDSCH slot and the HARQ feedback in the PUCCH. This way, the first and the last PDSCH slot will have no gaps and the feedback delay would be minimized, and the feedback codebook size also will be reduced in the process.
Khosnevisan also teaches, determining, by the terminal, a HARQ ACK feedback codebook based on the candidate PDSCH reception occasion set (Clm.1, “generating, by the UE, a feedback codebook for the window, the feedback codebook having a size based on acknowledgement feedback for first possible PDSCH occasions that occur during the identified one or more COTs of the window of the possible PDSCH occasions of the window.”).
Claim 11 is for terminal implementing method of claim 1 and is change in category with respect to claim 1. Presence of processor, memory and program or instructions stored in the memory is implied. Claim is rejected based on rejection of claim 1.
Claim 20 is for a non-transient readable storage medium (Note: For purpose of examination, examiner is considering “non-transient” as synonymous with “non-transitory”). This is a change in category with respect to claim 1. Claim is rejected based on rejection of claim 1.
Claims 2 and 12:
Regarding claim 2, combination of Khosnevisan and LG teaches, the HARQ ACK feedback method according to claim 1, wherein the determining a candidate physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) reception occasion set based on a slot timing set corresponding to an actual HARQ ACK feedback unit (discussed above) comprises: determining a second slot set corresponding to the candidate PDSCH reception occasion set based on the first slot set corresponding to each element in the slot timing set (Khosnevisan: [0122] A set of possible PDSCH occasion for a particular cell may be determined based on the K1 values and the TDRA candidates. For example, a set of PDSCH occasions is initialized as an empty set (MA,C). For each K1 value of a set of possible K1 values, a number of PDSCH occasions may be determined by evaluating a set of TDRA candidates to remove all TDRA candidates in a slot (e.g., slot n-K1,k) K1 that conflicts (by at least 1 symbol) with a corresponding TDD UL/DL configuration.”);
wherein the second slot set comprises all slot units in all first slot sets, and all the slot units are non-repetitive (non-repetitiveness is implied by discussion above of removal of conflicting candidates).
Claim 12 is for terminal implementing method of claim 2 and is change in category with respect to claim 2. Claim is rejected based on rejection of claim 2.
Claims 3 and 13:
Regarding claim 3, combination of Khosnevisan and LG teaches The HARQ ACK feedback method according to claim 2, wherein the determining a candidate physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) reception occasion set based on a slot timing set corresponding to an actual HARQ ACK feedback unit (discussed above) comprises:
performing grouping on a target start symbol and length of consecutive symbols (SLIV) set in a time domain resource allocation (TDRA) table to obtain at least one first target group (Khosnevisan: Fig.6A shows grouping of TDRA candidates showing TDRA candidates and TDRA occasions; [0121] “each member or TDRA candidate (R)) determines a starting symbol and length for a possible PDSCH. TDRA candidates (R) of the TDRA Table are divided into groups where each group represents a PDSCH occasion.”; Start and length is the SLIV as disclosed above); and
the determining a HARQ ACK feedback codebook based on the candidate PDSCH reception occasion set comprises: determining the HARQ ACK feedback codebook based on the at least one first target group; wherein each candidate PDSCH reception occasion corresponds to one first target group (Khosnevisan: [0147] “each member or TDRA candidate (R)) determines a starting symbol and length for a possible PDSCH. TDRA candidates (R) of the TDRA Table are divided into groups where each group represents a PDSCH occasion.”; “UE determines separately for each group 812, 814 whether to consider only one PDSCH occasion per slot or multiple PDSCH occasions per slot.”).
Claim 13 is for terminal implementing method of claim 3 and is change in category with respect to claim 3. Claim is rejected based on rejection of claim 3.
Claims 4 and 14:
Regarding claim 4, combination of Khosnevisan and LG teaches the HARQ ACK feedback method according to claim 3 (discussed above), wherein the target SLIV set comprises a set formed by all SLIVs in the TDRA table (See Fig. 6A; the first PDSCH occasion contains TDRA candidates 0-4, the second PDSCH occasion contains TDRA candidates 5 and 6, and the third PDSCH occasion contains TDRA candidate 7 "; the disclosures above show that target SLIV set comprises the set of all SLIV s in the TDRA table.).
Claim 14 is for terminal implementing method of claim 4 and is change in category with respect to claim 4. Claim is rejected based on rejection of claim 4.
Claims 5 and 15:
Regarding claim 5, combination of Khosnevisan and LG teaches the HARQ ACK feedback method according to claim 4 (discussed above), wherein each of the slot units in the second slot set corresponds to at least one candidate PDSCH reception occasion (Implied based on discussion above in claim 2 regarding second slot set and discussion in claim 4).
Claim 15 is for terminal implementing method of claim 5 and is change in category with respect to claim 5. Claim is rejected based on rejection of claim 5.
Regarding claim 6, combination of Khosnevisan and LG teaches the HARQ ACK feedback method according to claim 4 (discussed above), wherein the determining a HARQ ACK feedback codebook based on the candidate (PDSCH) reception occasion set comprises: for each first target group, feeding back an ACK or NACK for only at most one SLIV in the first target group (Khosnevisan: Fig.8A/8B shows feedback in slot n for group of PDSCHs from n-6 to n-1).
Claims 7 and 16:
Regarding claim 7, combination of Khosnevisan and LG teaches the HARQ ACK feedback method according to claim 4 (discussed above), before the performing grouping on a target SLIV set in a TDRA table, further comprising: removing, from the second slot set, an SLIV configured for uplink in a time division duplexing (TDD) frame structure (implied by the discussion above in claim 3 as per disclosure by Khosnevisan in [0122] “For each K1 value of a set of possible K1 values, a number of PDSCH occasions may be determined by evaluating a set of TDRA candidates to remove all TDRA candidates in a slot (e.g., slot n-K1,k) K1 that conflicts (by at least 1 symbol) with a corresponding TDD UL/DL configuration.”; removing any particular K1 value implies removing the feedback resource corresponding to that K1 value ).
Claim 16 is for terminal implementing method of claim 7 and is change in category with respect to claim 7. Claim is rejected based on rejection of claim 7.
Claims 8 and 17:
Regarding claim 8, combination of Khosnevisan and LG teaches the HARQ ACK feedback method according to claim 3 (discussed above), wherein the target SLIV set comprises an SLIV set formed by SLIVs in predetermined positions in all rows of the TDRA table (Khosnevisan in Fig.6 discloses SLIVs of positions for each row in the TDRA table which are determined as per symbol locations in a slot).
Claim 17 is for terminal implementing method of claim 8 and is change in category with respect to claim 8. Claim is rejected based on rejection of claim 8.
Claims 9 and 18:
Regarding claim 9, combination of Khosnevisan and LG teaches the HARQ ACK feedback method according to claim 8 (discussed above), wherein each first slot set corresponds to at least one candidate PDSCH reception occasion (Khosnevisan: [0122] A set of possible PDSCH occasion for a particular cell may be determined based on the K1 values and the TDRA candidates; Fig.6A discloses three reception occasions; at least one reception occasion is implied).
Claim 18 is for terminal implementing method of claim 9 and is change in category with respect to claim 9. Claim is rejected based on rejection of claim 9.
Claims 10 and 19:
Regarding claim 10, combination of Khosnevisan and LG teaches the HARQ ACK feedback method according to claim 8 (discussed above).
The claim, before the performing grouping on a target SLIV set in a TDRA table, further comprising: removing, from the first slot set, all SLIVs in a row containing an SLIV configured for uplink in a TDD frame structure, though not expressly taught by the combination of Khosnevisan and LG, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, based on the information that UE performs HARQ feedback for downlink reception and the SLIVs in a row in the TDRA table, configured for uplink in TDD, should be removed from first slot set to avoid overlap of UL/DL transmission.
Claim 19 is for terminal implementing method of claim 10 and is change in category with respect to claim 10. Claim is rejected based on rejection of claim 10.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 20230180232 A1 teaches communicating information via a plurality of communication opportunities of a semi-persistent scheduling opportunity;
US 20230284218 A1 teaches scheduling multiple communication channels via a single control element.
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